


Except You Enthrall Me

by emjee (MerryHeart)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Has Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Praise Kink (Good Omens), Hair Braiding, Kissing, Light Bondage, M/M, Praise Kink, Service Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), Tenderness, tie me up and tell me I'm important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 20:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20494859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryHeart/pseuds/emjee
Summary: The point is that old habits die hard, and when you’ve spent six thousand years repressing your feelings because your feelings are very dangerous for everyone involved, it turns out there’s not a switch that you can flip to make you wholeheartedly accept the tenderness that your beloved bastard angel offers you.or, "Tie Me Up and Tell Me I'm Important: the Anthony J. Crowley Story"





	Except You Enthrall Me

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Если ты не поработишь меня](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779278) by [Eldija](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldija/pseuds/Eldija)

_“What the fuck are fuckin’ feelings, yo?”_ –Lizzo, “Cuz I Love You”

“Will you stay, dear boy?”

Crowley has no idea how Aziraphale expects him to be anything approaching coherent after the fuck they’ve just had. Crowley feels boneless, weightless, he’s beginning to wonder if he’s discorporated, _can _you discorporate from fucking? He’s not currently on speaking terms with anyone who could answer that question.

“Crowley.”

“Mmph?” His face is completely buried in this absurdly fluffy pillow, and he’s having difficulty remembering a time when his world didn’t consist entirely of a flannel pillowcase and the smell of angel.

“Would you like to stay here?” he hears Aziraphale ask. “You know, for—the rest of the evening. We could open a bottle of wine, maybe go out for breakfast tomorrow…”

He feels Aziraphale’s arm wind around his waist and almost jumps out of his skin.

“Nah, ’s fine,” Crowley says, sitting up so fast that Aziraphale is forced to retreat to a safe distance. “Should go frighten the plants,” he continues, grabbing his clothes off the floor and slinging them onto his person at a frankly alarming speed. “They get complacent if I’m gone too long, start getting ideas above their station.”

“You wouldn’t be imposing,” Aziraphale says, still lying on the bed, soft and naked and perfectly calibrated to make Crowley’s heart leap out of his chest.

“I’d bore you,” Crowley insists as he shrugs into his jacket. “After a shag like that, probably just fall asleep.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Aziraphale’s doing that thing he does with his eyes where they become bottomless pools of tenderness and devotion, and Crowley wants to find whoever taught Aziraphale how to do that and thank them profusely before punching them in the face.

“That’s very generous, but like I said, the plants.”

Aziraphale turns his eyes heavenward—it’s a habit he hasn’t been able to kick—and Crowley knows he’s won. Lost. Whatever. “As you like, my dear.”

“We can still do breakfast, though.” Crowley ties the knot in his collar tighter than is strictly necessary. “Your choice where. I’ll pick you up?”

“Sure.”

“Great. That’s—good then. See you tomorrow.” 

“Crowley.” Crowley turns, hand on the doorknob. “Kiss me before you go, would you?”

“’Course. Sorry.” He saunters back over to the bed, intending to make things quick, but Aziraphale takes him by the back of the neck and pulls him in for a proper snog, tongues and all, and Crowley weighs exactly how embarrassing it would be to change his mind, strip back down, and melt into the bed.

Then Aziraphale pulls away and rests his forehead against Crowley’s, and suddenly every instinct in Crowley’s body is telling him to get in the Bentley and drive as fast as he can.

“Until tomorrow,” Aziraphale says.

“Mmhph,” says Crowley, and he’s out the door like there’s a hellhound at his heels.

_The point is_, he thinks, doing ninety back to Mayfair, _the _point _is_—Creation, he’s not even drunk, unless you can be drunk on angel, _can _you be drunk on angel? Once again, there’s no one he can ask—_there’s _the point, the point is that old habits die hard, and when you’ve spent six thousand years repressing your feelings because your feelings are very dangerous for everyone involved, it turns out there’s not a switch that you can flip to make you wholeheartedly accept the tenderness that your beloved bastard angel offers you.

“Ay, there’s the rub,” Crowley mutters as he kills the engine and stalks toward his stupidly angel-free flat.

There is so much he is willing to do for Aziraphale—so much he _has done _for Aziraphale, including make that damn play a smash, although it’s possible he’s once again taken more credit than he strictly deserves, as it was always a very good play, it was just trapped in a very _long _play, but taking more credit than he deserves is very demonic of him, and he’s still a demon, even if he does prefer the funny ones, “_I do love nothing in the world so well as you, is not that strange_, I mean _come on_—”

And he’s monologuing to the plants again, _dammit_.

The point is, Crowley has spent six thousand years loving Aziraphale by giving him whatever he wants, and now it’s all he knows how to do.

Oh, he thinks about the other things, things he wants from Aziraphale: the arm draped lazily across his waist, the forehead nudge, a thousand kisses as soft and light as springtime sun, and words, spoken with Aziraphale’s voice, about how lovely Crowley is, how perfect, how dear. He’s had many a furtive and furious wank to all of these thoughts, but now they don’t have to just be thoughts, he could _have _them, he knows he could, except he can’t, because instincts and habits and he’s gone and sabotaged himself yet again. _Et tu, Crowley?_

“Stop looking at me like that,” he tells an African violet. “Don’t act like you don’t have problems of your own, you haven’t flowered in _weeks_, and I don’t have to tell you what will happen if you don’t figure it out soon.” The plant gives a satisfying shiver.

At least the fucking is fantastic. An angel who delights in the joys of the flesh and a demon who gets off on giving the angel everything he’s ever wanted, how could it be _less _than stratospherically good? Crowley flings himself down on the sofa and takes a swig of the wine that’s appeared on the side table as he remembers that first time in Aziraphale’s back room, after the Ritz, when they both just went for it, kissing each other like the world had almost just ended because _it bloody had_. They’d refused to let go of each other, stumbled around knocking into books and furniture until Crowley navigated them to the sofa, where Aziraphale sat while Crowley went to his knees and focused all of his considerable power on making the angel feel better than he’d ever felt since setting foot on that wall in this strange, broken, beautiful world.

_Get up there and make some trouble_, they’d told him once, and for a while Crowley had thought that was his purpose. He’d made trouble in heaven, made trouble on earth, surely that was the point of him, the way the point of that angel over there was to obey and to love, definitely in that order.

And then he kept hanging around that angel, who was possibly even worse at obeying than Crowley was. And then Crowley started to suspect that trouble was actually just his _job_, and he was good at his job, he liked his job, but his job was not the _point_. The point was that he loved that angel.

Crowley then proceeded to spend several thousand years trying to communicate this point without anyone important finding out, and it looked like oysters and lunches and West End opening nights and fine wine and old books and daring rescues. And then all that Apocalypse nonsense, and now everything is out there in the open, and now “I love you” looks like bringing off your best friend and the love of your immortal life in the back room of his bookshop as he gasps and pulls at your hair while you wrap your tongue around his—

“_Fuck_,” Crowley breathes, taking his own prick in hand, and suddenly he’s not thinking about all the things he’s done for Aziraphale, he’s thinking about what he wants Aziraphale to do for him. He fucks into his fist imagining shoulder rubs and spooning and long, slow kisses that last three days and _for the love of all things profane _he’s coming already. It’s positively mortifying.

Breakfast the next morning should be familiar territory, and it is, for the most part, until Aziraphale lifts his fork toward Crowley and says, “Try a bit, my dear? They’ve got the yolk done perfectly,” and before Crowley can think he’s leaning forward and Aziraphale’s feeding him and he’s so overwhelmed he can barely move and they really _have _got the yolk done perfectly.

“Alright there, darling?” Aziraphale asks, licking a bit of Hollandaise off his thumb.

“Fine,” chokes Crowley.

It’s back to the bookshop afterward. At least, Crowley thinks as he turns onto Aziraphale’s street, he once again won the polite tussle for the bill. Money is meaningless, really, it’s all about the _gesture_, the I’ve-got-this-handled feeling when he signals to the waiter that the check comes to _him_, it’s his treat, his offering.

“Do you have plans,” Aziraphale asks, “or would you care to come in?”

Crowley throws the Bentley in park.

“You going to open today, angel?” Crowley asks from the sofa, once he’s reached the bottom of the coffee Aziraphale pressed into his hands without actually asking if he wanted it (he did, but he would not have said so).

Aziraphale sets his own empty cup down. He also is sitting on the sofa, and it’s making Crowley feel like all the subatomic particles in the room are vibrating at a slightly higher frequency than usual.

“Haven’t decided yet,” Aziraphale answers. It is quarter to noon.

Crowley raises an eyebrow. If he plays his cards right, maybe he can fuck Aziraphale so thoroughly that all memory of last night’s deeply embarrassing wank will be erased. “Do you want help with that decision?”

Aziraphale smiles and Crowley gives a little inward sigh of pleasure: _ah, good, read that mood right then. _“You know, I think I would.” He drapes an arm over Crowley’s shoulder, grasps Crowley’s jaw and tilts his head to just the right angle for a blissfully possessive kiss, one that practically screams _my demon, mine_, and Crowley would happily live off this feeling instead of air.

And then Aziraphale retreats a bit, the kiss becomes gentler, less demanding, and Aziraphale’s mouth is so _soft_, and what the fuck is Crowley supposed to _do_, just sit here and take it and not do _anything_? Sure, it’s only everything he’s ever wanted, it’s just that it’s not how this is supposed to work.

“What if,” Aziraphale sighs between kisses, “ah, how would you feel about…letting me tie you up and doing whatever I want to you?”

Oh, that’s better. Aziraphale doing whatever he wants is _definitely _how this is supposed to work.

“Sounds brilliant.”

They haven’t done anything like this before. Crowley has a pretty good idea of how it’s going to go, and he’s looking forward to it. Another chance to give Aziraphale exactly what he wants, to see ecstasy and love flood that beautiful divine face, and he’s responsible for it, that glowing expression is for him—

“Shirt off,” Aziraphale tells him, “and trousers. Leave your pants on for now.” He gives Crowley a quick kiss and starts rummaging in a dresser drawer until he finds a cravat that Crowley is sure he last saw during the Regency. (Crowley and Aziraphale had both loved the Regency: on the one hand, thoroughly debauched court, absolute prime temptation work; on the other hand, Aziraphale once had tea with Jane Austen in Bath and was utterly delighted by her.) “Sit on the bed, love. Hands behind your back.”

Crowley does as he’s told, feels Aziraphale caress his palms before he begins to wrap the linen around Crowley’s wrists.

“We should have a word you say, for if you want me to untie you.”

“Alright then, um…Alpha Centauri? Technically two words, I guess.”

“Alpha Centauri it is. You say that, whatever I’m doing I’ll stop, I promise.”

“Are you sure you’re wrapping that tight enough, angel?”

“I don’t want you to be sore later.”

“I won’t mind.” He feels Aziraphale tighten a knot.

“Can you get out of this?”

Crowley tries. He can move his wrists a bit, but there’s no way short of miracling himself free that he could get loose without Aziraphale’s help. “No.”

“Then it’s tight enough.”

“Did I feel you tie a bow back there, angel?”

“Maybe.” Aziraphale moves from behind Crowley and guides him to sit up against the headboard. “The rules of this are that I do what I want, remember?”

“Yes,” Crowley breathes, tipping his head back as Aziraphale straddles him.

“Well, if I want to tie you up gently with an old cravat and knot it with a bow, that’s my business, isn’t it?” His voice is so soft, his lips are so close to Crowley’s, Crowley wants to strain up to meet them, but now Aziraphale’s got his hands on Crowley’s shoulders and is holding him firm. “And if I want to run my hands all over you,” Aziraphale continues, pushing the tips of his fingers into the muscles of Crowley’s back, “and kiss you for hours and hours, that’s my business too, right?”

Crowley swallows. “Right.”

“Good.”

And then Aziraphale closes the space between them, and Crowley is being kissed like he’s never let himself be kissed before, all soft brushes of lips and dimples at the corner of his mouth and only a hint of tongue.

Maybe he was wrong about how this is going to go.

“Look at you,” Aziraphale murmurs against Crowley’s throat, “look how beautiful you are. I can see all your freckles, all those constellations you carry around with you.”

“Shut up,” Crowley says, sounding more panicked than anything else.

“Normally I’d like to see you try and make me,” replies Aziraphale, “but seeing as you have your hands tied behind your back I really think your options are limited.” He nuzzles into Crowley’s neck and presses kiss after kiss into his skin. “I can feel your pulse,” he whispers, “right…here.” His tongue darts out and Crowley gasps. “Mmm, you might be a demon, but your body still runs like a human’s…Heartbeat feeling a bit fast, my dear?”

What Crowley says is, “Fuck off,” but it comes out sounding like “I love you.”

“But seriously, sweetheart,” Aziraphale says in his ear, “is this alright? You know what to say to make me stop.”

“Not said it, have I?”

“Alright then, just checking. You seem to be in rather a state.” Aziraphale nips his earlobe and Crowley’s back arches entirely against his will. “You see what I mean.”

“Guh,” is all Crowley can manage.

“I could do this for hours, you know. I really just might.”

And it’s back to kissing, deeper this time, but just as gentle, slow and patient and completely devastating. Aziraphale’s hands stroke down Crowley’s arms, slide up his back, twine in his hair. Time loses meaning; all that exists is this body, hands tied with a piece of linen that hasn’t been worn for a hundred years but was kept clean and starched (_for this purpose?_ Crowley wonders hazily as Aziraphale kisses his cheekbones). All that exists is this body and the angel crowding it against the bed, holding it—holding _Crowley_—fast and close, like he is something precious, and he’s quite literally trapped, there’s nothing for it but to sit here and let himself be loved.

“Come forward a bit, darling,” Aziraphale says, helping Crowley away from the headboard and moving to sit against it himself. Crowley is about to ask what’s going on when he feels Aziraphale’s fingers combing through his hair, which he’s made longer since the end of the world. (He doesn’t miss the stress of eleven years ago, but he’s decided the hair he had then was A Look.) “Shall I braid your hair?”

This is in fact a scenario Crowley has brought himself off to a number of times since, oh, let’s say since the birth of the Antichrist. The exact number is greater than zero and also greater than twenty.

“Thought you were the one calling the shots here.”

“Right you are. Crowley, love, I’m going to braid your hair.”

Crowley refuses to be responsible for the noise he makes as Aziraphale drags his nails against Crowley’s scalp, sections the hair at the top of his head, and begins to weave strands together in what feels like a fairly skilled French braid.

“Angel—where did—who taught you—?”

“How to do this? Oh, it was a long time ago. Vikings, I think. Just kind of picked it up.”

“You did a stint with the Vikings? Thought they—uhn—thought they were always pillaging your people.”

“There was an unfortunate amount of desecration, yes, but not all the time. I still got assigned blessings in the Danelaw now and then. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, as they say. And the Danes were quite serious about their hair, always kept it beautifully combed and dressed. Drove Anglo-Saxon women wild.” Crowley feels Aziraphale tie off the braid with a hair band he must have miracled up. “Just as you drive me wild, my dear.”

“Stop.”

“You _do_.” Aziraphale’s hands are at his shoulders again, thumbs rubbing firm circles against his back. “You give me so much, you always have, it’s very sweet of you. So good. So _kind_. That’s right, love, breathe deep and take it. I love you, you make me deliriously happy, and it’s not because of what you do for me, it’s because of who you are.” His touch grows firmer, Crowley can feel his muscles seize and relax under Aziraphale’s soft, manicured hands. “It’s because you made conversation on a wall in Eden, when I was worried. It’s because you pointed out the things that I didn’t want to see. It’s because you could have been my enemy and instead you decided to be my friend. And then you decided to love me.”

“Didn’t—decide—”

“But you did,” Aziraphale continues, dragging his nails over the spot between Crowley’s shoulder blades and holding Crowley as he squirms. Their wings may be in another dimension, but there are some things you can’t tuck into a difference plane of existence. “Oh, you like that. And how would you like it if I did it harder…?”

“_Fuck_.”

“Mmmm, how delightful. And you did decide to love me. You didn’t have to do it, and there are those who would say you shouldn’t have, but you did, and you do, and I love you, past and present and future, and if I have to tie you up to make you sit still and let me do this for you, so help me I will do it every day, I’ve kept a lot of cravats.”

“_Angel…_” Crowley’s properly gasping now, like he’s forgotten how to breathe and also forgotten that he doesn’t need to.

“Darling.” Aziraphale runs a hand down Crowley’s spine, fingertips tracing over every single vertebrae. “You are so very, very dear to me.” He presses a kiss to the knob at the base of Crowley’s neck, and Crowley gasps Aziraphale’s name as he comes.

“Fuck, that’s embarrassing,” Crowley says, only slightly comforted by the fact that he doesn’t have to actively avoid eye contact.

“Not in the slightest,” the angel replies. “Honestly, I’m impressed, I wasn’t even trying to…”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“And if I tell you that I’m _very pleased_ that you had an orgasm, that it’s exactly what I wanted, even if I wouldn’t let myself think about it, what then?”

Crowley squirms. “Fine. Slightly better.”

Aziraphale kisses the back of his head and unties the cravat, slowly unwinding the linen from around Crowley’s wrists. “Ah,” he says, “you see, not a single red mark. Sometimes being gentle still does the trick.” Aziraphale stands and begins to divest himself of his clothes.

“What are you doing?” Crowley asks.

“I fancy a snuggle, and I’d like to feel your skin against mine. Turn down the covers, would you?”

Crowley almost comes again.

Once Aziraphale’s stripped to his liking, he pulls Crowley flush against him and holds on tight, slinging a leg across Crowley’s thigh and pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “How did you feel about that?”

“Had an orgasm.”

“Orgasms aren’t words, Crowley, nor are they feelings. You should know, your side invented hate sex.”

“First of all, not my side anymore, second of all, y’ever had hate sex? Hot as hell. Well. What humans imagine hell to be like. Real hell’s actually pretty damp.”

“I know, I’ve been, and yes, I have had hate sex—”

“Who the fuck—”

“—so I know first-hand that orgasms do not equal feelings. I will answer your question when you answer mine.”

Crowley sighs. “I loved every blessed minute of it.”

“The kissing?”

“Yeah.”

“And me playing with your hair?”

“Mhm.”

“And all the times I told you how much you mean to me and how desperately I love you?”

“Unh, now you’re just being cruel.”

Aziraphale’s self-satisfaction is both annoying and well-deserved.

“I had an assignment or two in New York during Prohibition, the hate sex was with a man I met at a sinfully—and I do mean sinfully—ostentatious party on one of those trips. Actually…it wasn’t so much hate sex as ‘neither of us can have the person we would really like to be doing this with, so I guess you’ll do’ sex.”

“You banged a bootlegger because you couldn’t—”

“Have you, yes, but he wasn’t a bootlegger, although actually now that you mention it I suppose banging a bootlegger would have given me the same sense of danger that I felt when I thought about banging you, but—”

“I cannot believe those words are coming out of your mouth.”

“Well it doesn’t matter now, darling, because you’re all I want, and I’ve got you.” He gives a little wiggle and runs a hand up Crowley’s chest. “And I do hope…I hope it gets easier, to ask for what you want. To accept it. But I want you know that I’m always willing to give it to you, even if you can’t ask, even if I have to tie you up six ways to Sunday.”

“It should get easier,” Crowley mumbles. Being surrounded by the Aziraphale’s warmth and angel smell is making him drowsy. “But, maybe—more practice tomorrow?”

“I’d be delighted. How about you sleep now, and when you wake up we’ll discuss dinner, and then…perhaps you’ll stay?”

“Angel,” Crowley breathes, taking Aziraphale’s hand in his own and bringing it to his lips, “you are deluding yourself if you think I am going anywhere ever again. Hang the plants. You win.”

“Dearest, I think that’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

The bookshop remains closed.

**Author's Note:**

> I owe the idea for this fic entirely to [this post](https://wholesome-revelry.tumblr.com/post/187431201087/somebody-please-write-the-fic-where) from the mods of wholesome-revelry on tumblr. Bravo, y'all. What an A+ concept.
> 
> EdensGardener has recorded this as a podfic! Click [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20993297) to go to it.
> 
> The title is from John Donne’s holy sonnet “Batter My Heart Three Person’d God”, which I present here in its entirety because it is so fantastically horny for the Divine: 
> 
> Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you  
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;  
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend  
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.  
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,  
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;  
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,  
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.  
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,  
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;  
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,  
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,  
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,  
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 
> 
> Whew. I need a drink.  
Come talk to me in the comments! You can find me on tumblr at [je-suis-em-jee](https://je-suis-em-jee.tumblr.com/).


End file.
